Polaris
by unnafraher
Summary: Aziraphale makes plans without taking everything into consideration. Someone wants to go ice fishing.


Hey, so this is my first _Good Omens_ one-shot. I have wanted to write something for this book for years, but nothing has ever quite panned out. Recently I picked up the book for my ninth read-through. This time however, something clicked, and I now have two ideas for two different sets of one-shots, one a Cthulhu Mythos-verse and another normal!verse. This piece is part of the latter set which I want to dedicate to my good friend Linn; I haven't actually spoken to her in a few months, but she is the reason I always keep a copy of GO on my shelves, even when it is the only pleasure-reading book amidst an ocean of textbooks. I am on my second copy of the book, and am happy to report that it is one read away from falling apart.

I apologise for the gratuitous use of Norway, but it's a damned beautiful country. I can't wait to return.

Anyway, like anyone who posts her stuff, I am quite interested in receiving feedback in any form. Especially constructive criticism, because there is yet one lonely little fragment of my soul clinging to a sputtering hope, praying that, one day, I may actually write something half-way decent.

Usually, my notes aren't this long.

Also, I actually do like Karl Ove Knausgård. Everyone ought to read his stuff.

* * *

All things considered, it is too bloody warm. Not that Aziraphale even knows offhand the correct temperature for this particular corner of Norway's innumerable eastern crags, nor does he know the region's exact average. He just knows that, whatever the right temperature is, it is a lot lower than the current one. Positive one centigrade—_at night. _It is like seeing red. That it isn't colder Aziraphale can't help but take as a vaguely personal affront to his carefully, genuinely on-the-internet planned holiday. And his first time in the country, no less.

For one thing, the temperature means that things are constantly in a flux from partially melt-y to inconveniently iced over. There are almost no icicles to catch light in breathtaking or naturally artistic manners. No proper glistening, no astonishing crispness. There is coldness, but the deflated snow banks and drifts give everything a desolate flatness. It isn't poetic melancholy that he's feeling.

Crowley, on the other hand, is taking the unseasonal weather rather in stride. At first he had been skeptical of Norway—not that he didn't want to go with Aziraphale on holiday when the invitation had been extended, but did that mean he would have to use snow chains? When was the last time in this millennium (the twenty-first) you had seen a 1926 Bentley doing anything so dull as faffing about in snow chains? It would not cramp his style, it would clank it. Or something.

Anyway, Aziraphale certainly wouldn't have them go by Shank's pony, wouldn't he?

No, he would have them go by boat.

Though Crowley _had_ been disappointed by the lack of authentic opportunities for what he imagined was authentic ice fishing (which was all this benighted country was good for these days, if not hoarding oil from their ancestral enemies to the east). The lack of solid, stable ice, lamentable as it was, had not been enough to stop him.

He had decided that they could hire a boat instead. They, for when the angel had heard the demon's proposed solution to the ice deficiency, he had said, "Well, count me in, then." It had sounded like a lovely idea.

Waiting for Crowley presently, Aziraphale loosens his woolen scarf just a titch more. It matches his jumper well, something he picked up because it resembles something the heroine of "The Killing" might wear. He looks around occasionally, from left to right, out into the darkness that the demon has still not materialised from. Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Down at the little dock there is another boat moored. But the camping site manager, a stout Nordic figure solidly in her sixties, had told them not to touch it. Her English had been plain, lilting, and precise: "Don't go touching that boat now if you value your lives." After a suitably ominous pause, "You want to go out, you find me." She had proceeded to offer them extra blankets or bedclothes as needed, or to pick up cigarettes, essentials, or the like on her way into the village.

Not far form Aziraphale there are several other cabins of like size. They are various colours currently rendered in shades of black and not-as-black by the 5pm darkness. The cabin that they are staying is cozily small. It is named something that sounds like a dreadful cough. As far as Aziraphale knows they are the only guests. Besides the LED torch illuminating his lap and the book open on it, there are no other electric lights. It is off-season, after all. And the air smells of pine, and winter. It all feels still and silent, not just hushed and waiting, but sleeping no matter how unseasonably warm.

Such a change from London.

It is a vivid contrast that makes the place acutely real to him—one of the particular thrills of travelling. There may be nothing to find, but there is always something new, or _renewed. _He had heard from someone—or read somewhere—that there was something special about Norway. The whole country slept. But under the wintry soporific enchantment a land's dream roiled and churned, living yet.

Aziraphale stops breathing for a moment.

And then he is fine.

Worked down from a tizzy on his own, if still not a bit piqued. He might compose a poem if he had the slightest inclination.

Aziraphale is much more sensible than that. Rather than dabble in free verse, he gives a smile and a nod to the Universe and, by inference, ineffability.

Eventually his attention filters down to his book, one gifted to him by Crowley. Allegedly it was written by a biblical editor. The title certainly does not see like heresy and it rather fitting for the author. Aziraphale's reaction to the intentional title—_Min Kamp—_is less visceral than a human's might've been, but his innate wariness of a human who can, will, and does write six books of biblical scope and length about himself in a few years' time, is proving correct. Although the achingly human bits of the book are startlingly resonant. He isn't sure what to think about that.

Then he hears footsteps on ice-encrusted gravel. He closes his book after scanning to the end of his current sentence, to the end of the half-page paragraph. Crowley emerges from the darkness. First the front of the boat he is carrying above him, then his black-parka-wrapped body.

"I found one," is all he says, passing by the angel on the way down to the dock.

"Yes, I can see that." Standing up, Aziraphale gathers the supplies for their outing: a rod, a pail, bait, blankets, torches, and, because alcohol is a staple according to every authority on ice fishing, a miracle-free bottle of 1978 Montrachet.

He then walks down the sloping path and sets the things down near, but behind, Crowley. The demon nods, still touting his glasses despite the current lack of light and vacant state of the place. For the next bit they don't need to talk much. He helps the angel into the boat, crouches and guides and waits for the rocking to subside. That water is quite chilly. Then he hands things off to Aziraphale with an occasional, "yes, put that there," to help sort the packing. Finally, he gets in himself.

They paddle out.

It is not easy moving amid the ice. Even if the floes are awkwardly thin, there's a number of them. The two beings cannot see each other's facial expressions, but the tension in Crowley's back is enough to suggest their strokes are not as co-ordinated as he would like. Optimal or not, their efforts get them out to where the cabins appear insubstantial. The tree line just a hint, the forest a single mass, the mountains guarding the horizon.

Crowley casts out, Aziraphale settles into plaid blankets and reads. The torch he uses is small enough to balance between his chest and chin. Strange as it looks, Crowley will still give him less grief for this than using a headlamp. Which he has done. It is actually a pleasantly efficient reading light, given the chance to shine.

He also vaguely wonders if there are any fish about at night. Nocturnal fish? Certainly those exist, for he is almost certain he has seen them on a BBC natural programme. Maybe Crowley will threaten them with an unholy (Hellish) deep-freeze if they continue to not oblige him even a trifle. He's fairly certain that it isn't his light keeping the fish away.

Nothing bites for a while. Some time passes.

And some more.

They are still on the water.

Crowley's certain that it is also still under the water. The fish maddeningly unresponsive, impudently sleeping, despite his best half-hearted efforts to rouse them.

But he cannot find it in him to wish them ill. So relaxed, too at ease. Too much, really, to manage right thinking. It isn't the boat lulling him.

More the scene—silence, an icy landscape, a boat on a long lake in the middle of a valley whose walls limn the violence of glaciers and time. Starts, obscenely bright, and a lunar light on snow that seems to be phosphorescent blue. The moon also casts light on the sleeping angel.

That's something new.

Something else that is fairly new is Crowley's increasingly common sense of serenity. Can't even muster the will to wake the angel, much less disturb him in the slightest. (And how could he, when he can't even manage to properly bully fish?) What he does do is sigh. And, with a deliberately weary and affectedly bored shrug—he of course _had _expected to catch something—turns to face his fishing companion.

He yawns in a way that could be described as contentedly, if you could dare that adverb. He takes off his glasses.

Contrary to what is easily assumed, demons sing anything well. Not just rock ballads and some of the racier bits of dubstep. They are, as beings of angelic stock, master vocalists.

Crowley starts humming. It's a haunting sound. It fills the air and vibrates molecules with such pathos, you'd think that a member of the heavenly host had descended for the purpose of giving nature a personal concert. His stage is an aluminum cradle.

He does not wake the angel.

But, with some imagination, persistence, and a titch of miracling, he does allow the angel the chance to indulge in one of the finer novelties of life on earth. He gives Aziraphale his first dream.


End file.
